Hi Peter,
Sorry for the delay but I was still putting together my Christmas gifts!
I really did not greatly change the rules outside of limiting what the squads could carry. Also, German, French, and British squads were upped to 12 men each but with the caveat by late war, most would have been around 9 or so men. US Squads were increased to 18 men. But all were restricted to Bolt Action rifles. I treated the US and French Chauchat as an Automatic Rifle but I could easily be talked into allowing it D3 shots before it fires.
Platoon HQs still retained two men but I increased Captain and Major's "runners" from 2 to 4. For the US Army, I allowed for shotguns for platoon troops.
LMGs like the Lewis and MG08/15 Were doled out sparingly like one per every three squads, which I think was close to the ratio by 1918. That pretty much works for both the Germans and British. If you're in 1917, you could add just one per force and be pretty much in the ball park.
For US and French troops, the Chauchat was given out a little more liberally, so you could have up to 2 per US squad in 1918 and one per French squad too. If you want to stay historical, The fourth US squad toted Grenade Launcher and did not carry Chauchats, but by October of 1918, US forces were experimenting with squad sizes and weapons loadouts, it just makes it easier to allow all squads the chance to carry a chauchat.
Morale was something we also just relied on the rules with a minor twist to show the war-weariness as the war progressed. We made Green "veterans". So the morale was of Green troops, but their survivability was high as let's face it, you didn't make it to 1917-18 by being dumb or unlucky.
Tanks. Tanks are not able to "run" as even the fastest was barely above a walk. But they may move AND FIRE all of their weapons thanks to their large crews. They still suffer a penalty for moving though! For the French FT-17 and its one man turret, use the rules from the French Army book if it activates.
Tanks were given a morale too but their morale is 8. We had all vehicles check their morale at the moment an order die or activation was given to it and if they failed, they could not move or fire for that turn (change the order die to DOWN). We chalked it up to just a few dozen of things that had gone wrong INSIDE the tank that kept the crew occupied just for that turn. A roll of 12 is still a FUBAR with a chance to light up your own side! It's smelly, steamy, oily, deafeningly loud and limited visibility. What's not to love?
Trench raiders or other highly skilled close combatants were given Tough Fighters (two attacks in melee) from the list of skills or special rules starting on page 70 of the rules. Again, where possible, we let the rules do the heavy lifting for us.
Most of the weapons translated very well and we did keep the national characteristics, so Germans could check to keep sarge alive (promotion opportunities) and so on but we did remove the jokingly called Cheating German LMG rule of getting an extra die for shooting. Pretty much everyone but the French used Machine-guns with just about the same cyclic rate of fire.
If you need Shotguns, use the one from the US Army booklet as the Remington pretty much remained the same throughout, well, US military time! For Grenade launchers, we used the French army booklet and the rules for the VB Grenade Launcher. The German AT Rifle was treated exactly like an AT Rifle.
For a good stonking before the fight begins, check out the rules for preparatory bombardment on page 118. Again, whenever we thought we would have to invent a rule, we found it in the book!
Wire. We treated wire as a linear obstacle that you could only walk through. If you spent a turn stationary next to the wire, you could cut a gap though it so remove or mark that bit of wire as clear terrain for movement. If a tank moves over the wire, remove the wire section the tank moved through. I am very lucky in that my sectons of wire are already on 4 – 6 inch strips so it is easy to remove sections.
Points. We kept the Same points costs as per the WWII rules and just made some translations. So for the US, a BAR became a Chauchat. A British BREN became a Lewis gun. It did not adversely affect the game at all and again, it made it easier on us. I have to admit I pay very little attention to points. We've played some great mis-match games and they were just as riveting and a lot more fun.
We found that the rules translates very well for the Great War and it brings on a different feel to skirmish gaming it as well. Machine-guns are ferocious and getting pinned in the open is a death sentence.
Our last house rule is for the number of chits that are pulled during a turn but we ONLY use it for large games. It works like this. You pull an order die, then you roll a D6. reach in and get enough order dice to match the die roll. Dole them out as normal. Once all of those order dice have been activated, draw again. Rinse and repeat. BUT we only do that for very large games with well over 15 order dice per SIDE. It plays remarkably well and gives a good ebb and flow of the battle and it still allows us to finish up a game right around the 4 hour mark or a typical game session at a convention.
I plan on running our Cantigny game at Nashcon in 2014. We normally have 8 – 10 players at once and each stay pretty busy if you can make it.
Hope that helps and write to let me know when your blog has been updated with the game!
Larry
gets started with WWI British in 15mm.
